Good morning, I need an advice please. Tenants (husband and wife -joint tenants) moved into my property less than a month ago after going through all necessary checks via OpenRent. Property was advertised as “no DSS” and all checks carried out confirmed they could afford rent as husband was working and earning good income and wife in receipt of benefits.
The wife has made contact after few weeks of moving in to advise that her husband has moved out of property as they’ve separated. She stated she can easily afford to pay the rent and listed her income and assured me she would pay on time. She has also requested to remove her husband’s name from tenancy so he can obtain his own property elsewhere.
What do you advise now that tenant is on benefits and requesting to convert tenancy from joint to sole?
They’re joint and severally liable for the current tenancy which I assume has at least five months remaining on the fixed term. In other words, between them, they’re on the hook for the remaining rent payments of the fixed term whether they’re separated or not. You can rent more than one property at a time so being on the AST at your place is not a barrier to him finding somewhere else to rent.
This is tricky because they’re only separated and you have no idea if they’ll get back together with each other. You can either keep things as they are and she simply pays the rent and see how you stand at the end of the fixed term or you can get them both to surrender the tenancy now and sign her up to a new AST on her own. If you do the latter, I’d get her to agree to cover any costs you might have in doing that e.g. referencing if you didn’t reference her before. You’ll have to release and reprotect the deposit and reissue all paperwork.
If you checked her last six months statements before they moved in, you’ll know if she can afford it on her own. Did you?
There is a chance that the initial tenancy was a ruse to help the ‘wife’ get a tenancy she wouldn’t have been able to get otherwise. I would be minded to ask both tenants to surrender the tenancy and then start again with new tenants. Failing that, I would keep both on the tenancy agreement and remind them both that they are both liable for all of the rent. Third option is to allow wife to take on tenancy (after surrender) if she can give hard proof of affordability by regular income - benefits or otherwise.
Its possible that this was always their plan, knowing that she would not have been able to obtain a tenancy on her own. I would decline to release him from the tenancy.
Thank you all for your responses. Thorough checks were carried out on both of them including credit checks and employment reference on husband. The husband’s income was high enough to cover the rent liability hence offering tenancy to them although wife’s income (benefits) are also sufficient. She also stated she receives other income including maintenance payment which will go towards paying the rent so it is affordable for her.
As she has only stated they are separated, I would leave the tenancy as it is (joint) till the end of the 12 months fixed AST and the review.
They have the same surname and all checks carried out states they are. I think they may just be temporarily separated and may come back together. I feel it’s too soon for her to be asking for his name to be removed from the tenancy, he may have done this to help her get the property.